What began as a newspaper editor's joke, became an international tourism draw for an 800-person Nevada town

Virginia City, Nevada, population 800, boasts a rich history of silver and gold mining that drew thousands to the town in the 1800s. But today, it's known more for something wholly unexpected in the American West: An annual weekend camel race. 

The town "looks like a film set of the Old West," reports Fil Corbitt for NPR's All Things Considered. "The sidewalks are wooden and the old storefronts are occupied by candy shops, souvenir emporiums and saloons. Off of the main street, at the base of a steep desert hill pocked with old mine shafts, dust whips through the fairgrounds." He asks Joe Hendricks, who owns the camels that will run the races, what it's like to ride them: "It feels like you're on a camel." 

Fair enough for a town whose history is likely more synonymous with riding horses. It's serious business in Virginia City, even if the origins of the races might not have been. It all began in the 1950s with editor of the local newspaper, Bob Richards, who "was nursing a hangover at The Delta Saloon," Corbitt reports. "He later recounted that he and the bartender were randomly joking about some nonexistent Labor Day camel races. When he went back to the paper, called the Territorial Enterprise, he found that he had space to fill and decided to write a joke story about the fictional race."

Such exaggerations were nothing new for the Enterprise, which, coincidentally, was the first place Samuel Clemens used his pen name, Mark Twain. Year after year, Richards would "recount" tales of the nonexistent camel races, and in 1960, the editor of the San Fransisco Chronicle upped the ante by offering to really bring the camels, and so, the Annual International Camel & Ostrich Races were born. 

This year marked the 67th running of the camels, and you can watch and read more about them from local TV news station, KOLO-8, and The Comstock Chronicle, the Enterprise's modern descendent.